Free YouTube transcript generator

Paste a YouTube link and get the transcript: the full text, split into timed segments, with the video’s chapters, title and channel.

  • Free, no sign-up
  • Up to 3 results per run
  • CSV download

Free tool

Free, no sign-up. Up to 3 results per run.

Press “Run free” and the real result shows up here, exactly what your agent gets back.

How it works

Live data, not a stale list.

Copying a transcript out of the YouTube player is slow and loses the timestamps. Here you paste the link once and get clean text plus every segment with its start and end time, ready to paste into ChatGPT, Claude or your notes.

Human-made captions are used when the video has them, auto-generated ones otherwise, and the result says which one you got. With an API key you can pick languages and send up to 200 videos per run.

Every result has

  • The full transcript as one text, plus a word count
  • Timed segments, each with its start time in seconds
  • Chapters, title, channel and duration
  • Which caption language was used, and whether it was auto-generated

Use cases

What people do with it.

Content repurposingTurn one video into a week of contentGet the transcript of any YouTube video and let your AI turn it into a blog post, newsletter or thread, with timestamps for quotes. Real sample inside.Read more Video summariesSummarize any YouTube video with your AIGive ChatGPT, Claude or your own agent the transcript of a YouTube video and get an honest summary instead of a guess. Real 3Blue1Brown sample.Read more Podcast show notesShow notes for every episode, with timestampsGet the transcript of a podcast episode on YouTube and let AI write show notes with timestamps, guest quotes and links. Real 3-hour episode sample.Read more Study notesStudy notes from lecture videosGet the transcript of a lecture or course video and turn it into study notes, flashcards and practice questions with AI. Real MIT lecture sample.Read more RAG knowledge basePut YouTube videos into your knowledge baseLoad YouTube transcripts with timestamps into your RAG pipeline or vector database, so your AI can answer from videos and cite the minute. Real sample.Read more Product review researchLearn what reviewers really say about a productRead what video reviewers say about a product: pull review transcripts and let AI list praise, complaints and comparisons. Real iPhone review sample.Read more

Every page shows a real recorded run of the tool.

Free or with a key

Start free, scale with a key.

Free tool

  • No account, no card
  • Up to 3 results per run
  • 12 free runs per hour, shared by all free tools
  • Download as CSV

With your API key

  • 2,000 free credits when you sign up
  • 1 credit per transcript, failed results are free
  • Up to 200 results per run, every option of the tool
  • API, MCP for Claude and Cursor, CSV and Excel export
Get your free keyAPI docs

Questions

Good to know.

Is the transcript generator free?

Yes, one video per run, no account needed. With your API key you start with 2,000 free credits; each transcript costs 1 credit, videos without a transcript are free.

Does it work for every video?

It works for videos that have captions, either uploaded by the creator or auto-generated by YouTube. Private videos, removed videos and videos without any captions return no transcript.

Can I get the transcript in another language?

With an API key, pass language codes like “de” or “pt-BR” in order of preference. If the video has none of them, you get the original transcript and the result tells you so.

For developers: the YouTube Transcripts API, options and MCP setup are on the tool page.

Start with 2,000 free credits.

Sign up with your email, get your key, run the full tool from your agent, a script or the dashboard.

Get your free key